Nerlens Noel Did Himself No Favors By Voicing Displeasure, as current tone suggests he may be the odd player out going forward

Honesty is the best policy, unless you are an NBA center in the last contract year, and you are frustrated with the outlook of your playing minutes in competition with two other very talented center. Then you should hold your tongue ever so slightly.

Seasoned veteran Elton Brand has been working with Nerlens Noel this summer, but his sage wisdom may have come too little too late.

Elton Brand said Noel is “not holding the best cards right now” in regards to speaking out about the crowded big men spots.

Philadelphia is a city that gets the frustration from players, and even sympathizes when they want to compete, to give their all. But the city, and her fans, draw the line when it becomes a distraction.

Right now, that is what Nerlens Noel is becoming.

I do not consider myself the most observant person in the world at times, but there is a definite trend forming with the Philadelphia 76ers. As time moves forward, we are seeing more of Joel Embiid, and we are seeing the pairing of Embiid with Jahlil Okafor.

“It’s not really something that we’ve discussed given some of the concerns that I think Nerlens has had right now,” said team president Bryan Colangelo. “There’s been very little, if any, discussion with his agents about any extension scenarios. But, I’ll just leave it at that.”

The problem with that gaffe is two-fold. While his assessment was correct, he publicly called the team’s executives to the carpet… a new regime that has not been in office for even a year. The second thing is that his complaint was about playing time before the season began. In short, his discontent happened before he was shorted playing time.

Meanwhile, the team has begun to explore the synergy of placing Joel Embiid and Jahlil Okafor on the basketball court simultaneously.

Will it work? Right now all the chips of the team’s future seem to be placed on Joel Embiid. So will that work out? It will if Embiid says it will. Right now, that seems to be the case. On a team plagued with injuries, the scramble to find a healthy core of players to build upon moving forward in paramount.

Joel Embiid likes pairing up with Jahlil Okafor so he can display his perimeter skills. “I think I’m a guard,” Embiid said with a smile.

And so, the shift begins. While Okafor is a center whose offense can dominate the post, Joel Embiid’s game is part post, part perimeter. Noel and Okafor did not work because neither player had a perimeter game. Joel Embiid has one.

And without the presence of Ben Simmons, the team must determine who works with whom. For now, the two best players on the team appear to be the potential of Jahlil Okafor offensively and the two-way dominance of Joel Embiid.

Its no longer that he cannot get significant playing time. Right now it feels like his heart is no longer in it. In Philadelphia, regardless of the professional sport, discontented players land on another team. That is simply how it rolls in Philly.

And so, Nerlens Noel named the nemesis of the Philadelphia 76ers, and in doing so, may be the victim of the fix to that situation. Bryan Colangelo had a history of working with a big man who he felt had lost the desire to play for the Toronto Raptors in Chris Bosh. Nerlens Noel would benefit more by studying NBA history, than complaining about the future.